The Time Lords intercept the Doctor, Sarah and Harry as they transmat back
to Nerva, and send them to Skaro in the distant past in order to prevent
the creation of the Daleks. There they discover the planet's two native
races, the Kaleds and the Thals, are nearing the climax of the Thousand
Year War. As the conflict reaches its terrible conclusion, Sarah discovers
that a disfigured Kaled scientist named Davros has already accomplished
what the time travellers were sent to stop: the genesis of the Daleks.

Production

Despite the Daleks' infamy as Doctor Who's premiere monster, their
1964 introductory story, The Daleks, had
furnished them with only cursory origins. The scripts by their creator,
Terry Nation, merely hinted that they were the mutant descendants of a
race called the Dals, survivors of an atomic war. Starting in 1965, Nation
and former Doctor Who story editor David Whitaker expanded on these
notions in the Dalek comic strip running in the TV Century 21
magazine. They revealed that the monsters were the result of experiments
by the scientist Yarvelling, who was now referred to as a member of the
Dalek -- not Dal -- race. Later, in a 1973 edition of the Radio
Times, Nation suggested a totally different genesis. In his short
story We Are The Daleks!, the Daleks were created on Ameron by
scientists from Halldon, who had captured and accelerated the evolution of
early man.

But with no concrete background for the Daleks given in the Doctor
Who TV series itself, in late 1973 the outgoing production team of
producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks encouraged Nation to
explore the beginnings of the Daleks in a new storyline. Nation had
contributed a Dalek serial to each of the previous two seasons -- Planet Of The Daleks and Death To The Daleks -- but his initial effort
for Season Twelve had been rejected as being too derivative of his
earlier works. Starting anew with Letts' and Dicks' suggested approach,
Nation crafted a new storyline which veered away from both the TV
Century 21 and Radio Times versions of the Daleks' origins
(although he made an effort not to contradict The
Daleks itself).

Terry Nation's initial effort for Season Twelve was
rejected as being too derivative of his earlier works

The six scripts for “Daleks -- Genesis Of Terror” were
commissioned on April 4th, 1974. New script editor Robert Holmes was not
particularly enamoured of the Daleks, preferring to introduce new monsters
rather than rely on old standbys. Nonetheless, Letts convinced him to
proceed with the project, impressing Holmes with his excitement for the
concept of a story which explored the beginnings of the Daleks.

For the new serial -- given the production code Serial 4E -- Nation
decided to concentrate on the character of Davros, who would be revealed
as the creator of the Daleks. Aware that Dalek dialogue was often very
tedious to write and to watch, Nation envisaged Davros as having aspects
of both humans and Daleks, enabling him to act as a mouthpiece of sorts
for the monsters. Hence the base of his travelling machine, his single
artificial eye, his electronically-modified voice and even his single arm
were all designed to evoke the form of the Daleks themselves, but Nation
retained human speech patterns for the character. Nation was also keen to
depict Davros as surviving the story, in an effort to avoid the mistake he
had made at the climax of The Daleks, in which
he had effectively killed off his creations, not anticipating their
impending popularity.

Nation's scripts went through minor changes during their development. The
role of a Kaled officer named General Greiner was subsumed by Ravon, while
Sevrin was paired with a second Muto named Marrass. The character of Tane
was originally called Gitane, and Kravos was named Fenatin. Nation
intended the Mutos to be much more bestial in appearance, their forms
usually hidden by their rags. The writer had also put greater emphasis
on the subplot in which Sarah contracted radiation poisoning, recalling
a similar story strand in The Daleks. The
brutal nature of the war between the Kaleds and Thals was inspired by
the 1936 film Things To Come, while Nation also decided to play
up the Nazi allusions which, he now realised, had influenced his
original conception of the Daleks.

The story's title had become the more standard Genesis Of The
Daleks by the time new Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe
took the reins of the programme. Like Holmes, Hinchcliffe disliked the
Daleks. He decided to tailor the story to something closer to his vision
of Doctor Who by approaching it in a more mature manner than
previous Dalek stories. This ethos met the approval of director David
Maloney, whose last work on the show had been Planet
Of The Daleks. It was Maloney who scrapped Nation's version of the
Doctor's opening meeting with the Time Lord -- originally set in a serene
garden -- and replaced it with the no-man's-land ambush, to Nation's
disapproval. Maloney envisaged the scene as an homage to the classic 1957
Ingmar Bergman film, The Seventh Seal.

David Maloney scrapped Terry Nation's version of the
meeting with the Time Lord, set in a serene garden, in favour of the
no-man's-land ambush

Work on Genesis Of The Daleks began shortly after New Year's Day
1975. Five days were spent at Bletchworth Quarry in Bletchworth, Surrey,
from January 6th to 10th, filming material set in the wastelands of Skaro.
Having struggled with the Daleks on location during the making of Planet Of The Daleks, Maloney intentionally
arranged his shooting schedule so that they would appear only in the
studio on Genesis Of The Daleks. The scaffolding escape sequence
was then recorded at the Ealing Television Film Studios on the 13th and
14th. Model filming on the 16th took place on the premises of Bura &
Hardwick in North London.

Genesis Of The Daleks was taped in three studio sessions,
fortnightly on Mondays and Tuesdays. The first of these occurred in BBC
Television Centre Studio 1 on the 27th and 28th of January. The first day
concentrated on episode one, and also included the part three material set
in Command HQ. The second day saw the completion of most scenes from the
second episode, in addition to those occurring in the detention room and
the adjacent corridor for the fourth installment. Michael Wisher, playing
Davros, prepared for his masked role by wearing a paper bag over his head
during rehearsals, to help him convey much of the emotion of the part
purely through dialogue.

The second block, on February 10th and 11th, shifted to TC8. Most of the
rest of episode three was taped on the Monday, as was the outstanding
material from part two, set in the rocket silo and the ductwork. Only the
sequences in the launch room and the lab remained for the third
installment, and these were completed on the Tuesday, alongside the bulk
of episode four and part five scenes taking place in the trench and the
Thal corridor. By this point, the decision was made to tone down some of
the serial's more overtly Nazi-esque imagery -- the iron cross Nyder was
seen to be wearing at the start of the story, for instance, vanished at
this stage.

Finally, the last two days -- February 24th and 25th -- involved the
taping of the fifth and sixth installments, respectively. This session
took place in TC6. Genesis Of The Daleks was scheduled to air
before Revenge Of The Cybermen, the serial
which had preceded it into production, and the next adventure to be made
as part of the twelfth recording block -- Terror Of
The Zygons -- would be held over to start a new season in the
autumn. This meant that all of Season Twelve was now in the can.

Mary Whitehouse described Genesis Of
The Daleks as “tea-time brutality for tots”

Critics of Doctor Who had been fairly silent since the early
Seventies, when stories such as Terror Of The
Autons had incited calls for a reduction in the series' violent
and horrific content. With the broadcast of Genesis Of The Daleks
episode one on March 8th, however, these cries were heard anew. As had
happened earlier in the decade, Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers'
And Listeners' Association lead the charge, going so far as to describe
the serial as “tea-time brutality for tots”. Even Nation
himself was forced to admit that he considered Genesis Of The
Daleks inappropriate viewing for his children, then aged eight and
three.

Despite the furour, Hinchcliffe simply noted that he had ensured the
violence was not of the sort which children could copy, and that
ultimately it was the parents who bore the responsibility of deciding what
programming was suitable for their offspring. This was hardly enough to
mollify Whitehouse and her supporters, however, and Genesis Of The
Daleks would not be the last time that she and Hinchcliffe would cross
sabres.